Tag: Deep State

Red States: GOP Strong

I live in the Deep South and for years I have been trying to explain why this region and others are so hard core GOP.

I have approached it from many different angles and as of yet I have not found a good excuse for their voting habits or their political attitudes.

Then recently I came upon an article written for the Daily Beast about this phenom…..the explanations are valid and thought provoking…..

In my neck of the woods, even two gay men in 2004 didn’t want to be Democrats. We can change this stigma—but we need to learn how to speak Republican.

You have known her for 30 years. She was in your wedding. She is smart and has a big heart. The day you realized she voted for Trump you were thunderstruck. “Who is this stranger?” you thought. Literally, your entire understanding of her crumbles. She feels your judgment and resents it. The dynamic of this relationship changes. It may evolve, but it will not be the same.

I may be able to help explain this communication and understanding gap and how to bridge it. I am a Democrat who speaks fluent Republican.

Source: Why the Republican Brand Is So Strong Where I Live

And at times it seems as if Repubs are living in some alternate political universe and it has become more likely with the election of Trump…..

A new SurveyMonkey poll shows shocking data that reveals President Donald Trump’s Republican supporters are living in a totally different reality than everyday Americans.

According to an Axios report, one-third of Republicans only get their news from Fox News and 89 percent of Republicans trust news coming from Trump before they see it on CNN.

Over the weekend, Trump tweeted a video showing him literally attacking CNN and leaving it flattened. Many took issue with the graphic as journalists are increasingly being attacked and threatened.

Source: Poll Reveals Republicans Really Do Live in an Alternative Universe | Alternet

What say you?  Do our Repub brethren live in an alternative universe?

We Have A “Spygate”

Look shiny keys….rattle….rattle….fetch!

We have had Watergate…Bridge-gate……and a wealth of other gates.  Anything the media thinks they can milk for some benefit they will label it a “-gate”…..that is whatever they can sensationalize.

One of the most recent was the Russia-gate fiasco…..you know what I mean…..but in case you are a dolt or completely ignorant…..

The hysteria over “Russia-gate” continues to grow – as President Trump’s enemies circle – but at its core there may be no there there while it risks pushing the world toward nuclear annihilation

There may be a turn-about-is-fair-play element to Democrats parsing the words of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other Trump administration officials to hang them on possible “perjury” charges. After all, the Republicans made “lock her up” a popular chant citing Hillary Clinton’s arguably illegal use of a private email server as Secretary of State and her allegedly false claim under oath that her lawyers had hand-checked each of her 30,000 or so emails that were deleted as personal.

But there is a grave danger in playing partisan “gotcha” over U.S. relations with the world’s other major nuclear superpower. If, for instance, President Trump finds himself having to demonstrate how tough he can be on Russia — to save his political skin — he could easily make a miscalculation that could push the two countries into a war that could truly be the war to end all wars – along with ending human civilization. But Democrats, liberals and the mainstream news media seem to hate Trump so much they will take that risk.

Source: The Politics Behind ‘Russia-gate’ – Consortiumnews

And of course all this back and forth the Trump people are spreading around about that ominous sounding “Deep State” was a logical next step…a “SPYGATE”.

Everyone is suddenly talking about the Deep State – the configuration of spy agencies, career bureaucrats, and overseas spooks whose murky omnipresence has been brought to light by President Trump’s contention that he was “wiretapped” by his predecessor.

With his usual imprecision, Trump managed to confuse the issue by ascribing the surveillance to Barack Obama, and so naturally spokesmen for the former President had no trouble batting this charge away. But as a former Obama speechwriter put it:  “I’d be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the [White House] ordered it.”

Source: Spygate: America’s Political Police vs. Donald J. Trump by — Antiwar.com

This is all so silly.  It is a diversion from the horrible state of political affairs.

Give them, the media, a new “shiny object” to chase.

Is He “Raging Mad”?

The term that gets so much ink these days is “Deep State”.  It is used ad nauseum (I’m guilty of it) but all that usage does anyone real know what is written about….what is the “Deep State”?

Simply put……” a political situation in a country when an internal organ (“deep state”), such as the armed forces and civilian authorities (intelligence agencies, police, administrative agencies and branches of governmental bureaucracy), does not respond to the civilian political leadership.”

And that is what so many are accusing the situation in DC these days….Trump is pissed these days (probably be something else next month) that all the leaks are making him look bad in the eyes of his adoring public…..

One clear narrative has emerged in the wake of a weekend in which President Trump accused former President Obama of tapping his phones: Trump wasn’t just in a bad mood over the last few days, he was livid—or “steaming, raging mad,” as a piece at the Washington Post puts it. Coverage:

  • By most accounts, this was set off by Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision on Thursday to recuse himself from any Russia investigation. Trump felt he caved to pressure instead of defending himself, and he went “ballistic” at senior staffers in the Oval Office on Friday morning, reports ABC News.
  • “Nobody has seen him that upset,” an unnamed source tells CNN, which has a video shot from outside a White House window of the meeting. See it here.
  • The New York Times says his “foul mood” remained as he left for his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida for the weekend, and the story says it spilled over to Saturday morning, when he woke and began tweeting about Obama.
  • Friend Christopher Ruddy, chief executive at Newsmax, saw him on the golf course Saturday. “He was pissed,” Ruddy tells the Post. “I haven’t seen him this angry.” The Post has the most detailed account of the president’s weekend, which it says was fueled not just by Sessions but by Trump’s growing anger about what he views as the opposition of the “deep state” (entrenched bureaucrats and intelligence officials) to his presidency. That narrative in particular is reportedly a big one being pushed in private meetings with Trump by aide Steve Bannon. Read the story here.

Trump told Ruddy he would be “proven right” about the Obama surveillance, and a White House official tells Axios that Trump is “absolutely convinced” of it. “The president just has a great nose for these things,” said the official, adding that “it’s the bureaucratic leaks—the deep state—that bother him most.”

This is a fight that need not be fought.

This saga is far from over…..Trump needs to calm down and think before engaging the Twitter fingers.

This is a fight that I do not believe he can win.